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| Home Front: Politix | |
| G.W. BUSH: THE MISSING YEARS | |
| 2004-07-30 | |
In one respect, Bush's skeptics are right: Bush never did report to the Alabama Air National Guard. He may not even know where its barracks were. That's because during the period in question, Bush was serving his country elsewhere, in a clandestine military unit: the Special Undercover Missions Service (SUMS), an elite air-force agency specializing in national security and acts of espionage. Created by the Eisenhower administration in 1958 to respond to growing concerns about aerial reconnaissance by the Soviet Union, SUMS operated for twenty-one years in a shroud of secrecy. There is no offcial record of the organization; SUMS is said to have been terminated by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. If the young Bush was looking for globe-trotting action, he could not have picked a better time to join SUMS. The agency was a favorite of then president Richard Nixon and his FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, who, before his death, in May 1972, regularly used SUMS operatives for missions both military and cultural. Under the Nixon White House, SUMS agents were dispatched to Vietnam, Russia, Korea, East Germany, China, and Israel. They were also assigned domestically, spying on individuals and groups believed to be detrimental to U.S. interests. Before Bush's arrival, SUMS is believed to have briefly infiltrated the Allman Brothers Band, the Students for a Democratic Society, and The Dick Cavett Show. "For politicians, SUMS was a fantasy agency—they were autonomous, intelligent, and eager," says Prentiss. "If the White House wanted them to pop out of a hole in Cambodia, they could do that. But if they wanted them to ball Janis Joplin, they could do that too. Those guys could do anything." | |
| Posted by:Michelle Cook |
| #14 Right, Bush can't put together a coherent sentence, but he was a spy. HA! It was a satirical article! |
| Posted by: Anonymous6096 2004-08-17 10:00:24 AM |
| #13 Gentlemen and ladies, this story is delightful, yes, but is nothing more than a very good zoo. The Magnificent Ambersons, heh, a front org for the good guys. RL, SO |
| Posted by: Red Lief 2004-07-31 12:19:13 AM |
| #12 Old Spook - yes, I graduated from Lowry - in 1966! I'm not working out of anywhere these days - laid up with a bad back. Email me offline if you want more... |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-07-31 12:15:26 AM |
| #11 TK |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-07-30 9:27:31 PM |
| #10 Col. Flagg? Was this your outfit? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-07-30 9:11:55 PM |
| #9 You one of those Lowery grads? Working out of Chantilly these days? Nice work if you can get it. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2004-07-30 8:57:58 PM |
| #8 Ship - damned straight! IN intel - as in imagery intelligence - looking at pictures taken at varying altitude above the earth. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-07-30 7:39:27 PM |
| #7 At Intel or in Intel? Big difference in the stockoptions. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-07-30 7:21:32 PM |
| #6 I spent 26 years in Intel. I've never heard anything about this group, or any group similar to this. I had a friend that, as a Marine, infiltrated the SDS in the 1960's, so there's some truth that we did things like that. I had my personal involvement in "spook" activities, and some of the things I ended up doing were really, REALLY strange, but they were directly military-related. I find this more in the line of a Scrapleface article than GQ, but who knows, there may be some truth to it. GWB in the late 1960's and early 1970's would have been exactly the type of person attracted to clandestine operations. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-07-30 7:03:48 PM |
| #5 Best line: Indeed, Bush found the Stones to be a band obsessed with drugs, women, and haircuts, but not revolution. "He did learn that Mick wanted to make solo albums," said one former FBI agent. "Come to think of it, we should have stopped that." |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2004-07-30 6:41:48 PM |
| #4 My friend called me about this last night. He read it and told me of the pic. He wanted to know if it was satire or not and asked that I poke around the blogosphere to see what's what. |
| Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-07-30 6:13:41 PM |
| #3 ... So, has anyone double-checked their sources? I'd also like to see these "S-signal" photos ... because if any of this is true ... our president is better-than-the F***ING man. |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2004-07-30 5:32:39 PM |
| #2 I understand they have a pic of W w/geisha girls. |
| Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-07-30 4:58:48 PM |
| #1 Thank God they infiltrated the Allman Brothers. Who knows what would've happened if they took over. Yikes! |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-07-30 2:07:52 PM |